Art=Life at R.L. Delight Fine Art-
Coastal Paintings from the Wild Edge of the Pacific Northwest

Monday, January 20, 2014

Wave Study #71

Our glorious weather continues! It is a little eerie to have warm sunshine and no wind instead of our usual cold, wind, rain, and stormy weather. Usually I am wearing several layers to go outside this time of year. Now, just a coat and hat over my usual clothes. I will take it, for now!I decided on my morning beach walk to head to Short Sands Beach again to paint.
The beautiful weather and holiday weekend has its drawbacks. Today I constantly had people standing around me. Maybe that is why I like to paint in the wild weather, I am usually guaranteed privacy then! It was so warm on the beach that worked without even a coat! I was actually hot in the sun. Thankfully I put on sunscreen and wore my painting hat. Here is part of the view of my office from Short Sands today:

That is the waterfall I often mention when talking about Short Sands Beach and, even though the tide was going out, the falls were cascading into the incoming waves. The scale of it is hard to tell from this photo. Perhaps I should have included some of the people in the photo, the falls is a fairly respectable size. Twill's ashes are buried nearby and today she had plenty of dogs on the beach to commune with.In spite of the calm weather, the waves were about 10 to 12 feet. In fact, they grew larger as the tide went out. That meant they came rushing in further up the beach which gave the effect of the tide staying in the same place rather than receding. I was pleased that I had gauged the tidal reach perfectly and the water only got within a couple of feet of me at its highest point. There was one grand sneaker wave as I was leaving that came up the beach quite far. I looked back and saw the water had shot past where I was set up. Good thing I had already left. I always put my gear up higher so that I only have to worry about my easel and myself if a wave gets unruly.
I usually bring a selection of panels to paint on. Everything from my study canvas to canvas panels for finished paintings. That allows me to choose what I am going to paint based on conditions and my own state of mind. Today I decided to do a wave study with rocks. The wave conditions were different than what I usually see. Here is Wave Study #71:

I timed this one. I did a 30 minute block in, reset the timer for an hour and finished the study in that time-frame. I am trying to get a few processes in place, the block-in being one of them. I usually do the block-in and then paint the study on another panel. Today I tried it all on the same panel. At the moment, this way of working feels quite awkward. Hopefully it will smooth out with practice and then I will decide if it is a good way for me to work.
I work at the store tomorrow and Wednesday so no plein air painting. I will do a couple of block-ins of still life to get a bit of practice in. The weather outlook shows the strange warm weather to be continuing this week. I have to go up North on Thursday to stock up on groceries but will stop to paint at Hug Point, if conditions permit, on the way up.